Twitter probes Trump’s brief outage

Social media firm says new safeguards put into effect.

Some cheered and others raised concerns when President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, a mouthpiece for the U.S. presidency, mysteriously went dark for a few minutes this week.

“My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee,” Trump wrote from his restored account early Friday morning, making light of the brief Thursday evening outage that vexed many of his millions of followers. “I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.”

Twitter on Thursday night blamed a customer support worker for deactivating Trump’s account on his or her last day on the job. The San Francisco-based social media company added Friday that it is investigating what happened and has “implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again.” It has declined further explanation, raising questions not only about its own security measures but on Trump’s heavy reliance on a single platform to broadcast his views.

While Twitter’s customer service employees have the ability to suspend or remove accounts, or delete individual tweets, over violations of service terms, they cannot post on someone else’s account. What’s less clear is if the company has tougher safeguards for taking action on higher-profile accounts, such as Trump’s.

“It’s not surprising that even the brief shutdown of the president’s Twitter account has provoked debate,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, which has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s practice of blocking Twitter users who criticize him or his policies.

Twitter has been Trump’s primary means of communicating with the masses since even before he launched his presidential campaign. During the campaign and in the White House, Trump has been open about resisting pleas from family and friends to set aside his mobile device and to act more presidential. Trump says the service allows him to get his message out to his supporters without the filter of the media, but it’s also allowed him to circumvent his own staff.

Trump’s twitter missives frequently catch even senior aides off guard, such as when he ratcheted up the rhetoric on North Korea this summer. Bombarded with questions about the 140-character policy statements or political attacks, White House staffers are often in the dark themselves. “The tweets speak for themselves,” is a common refrain from staff unable or unwilling to explain the president’s comments.

Jaffer said Friday that “love it or hate it, the account has become an important source of news and information about the government” and Trump’s tweets “often shed light on official decisions and policies — and even when they don’t, they shed light on the temperament, character, and motives of the person most responsible for them.”